In this guide, we provide background, tips and suggestions, newswriting for context and experts and sources for you to turn to as you ramp up your coverage of religion and the 2026 midterms.

The Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society is based at Baylor University in Waco, Tx. The center seeks to promote research, teaching, and understanding of religion and politics in communist, post-communist and totalitarian societies. Director is Kathy Hilllman. Contact is Keston Center Archivist Larisa Seago.

This guide is designed to help reporters uncover fresh, compelling and nuanced religion stories in advance of the United States Semiquincentennial celebrations in July 2026.

Sohrab Amari is an Iranian-born American journalist, author and editor, best known as a co-founder of the online magazine Compact and U.S. editor of UnHerd and the author of Tyranny, Inc: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty — and What To Do About It (2023). He is a source on politics from a Catholic perspective […]

Mai Soto is Director of the Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research at the University of London. Soto’s research focuses on the integrity of global justice systems, with particular emphasis on the death penalty and the legitimacy of courts and police. In July 2024, the UN Human Rights Council appointed Mai as the fourth […]

Ray Takeyh is Hasib J. Sabbagh senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). His areas of specialization are Iran, U.S. foreign policy and the modern Middle East. Prior to joining CFR, he served as senior advisor on Iran at the State Department and was a fellow at Yale University, […]

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is an independent, bipartisan commission created by the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) that monitors religious freedom violations abroad and makes policy recommendations to the U.S. federal government.

Mehdi Khalaji is a senior fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy specializing in Shiʿa politics and Iran’s religious establishment. 

Benedikt Roemer is a Walter Benjamin Fellow at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies of the University of Oxford. His research interests include religious diversity in the Middle East, religion and nationalism, diaspora studies, the history and contemporary story of the Iranian Christian community and ethnographic research on religion in Arabic, Persian and […]